Saturday, April 07, 2012

What women want, and things really were betterSailer on ‘Mad Men’ and Roissy on romance novels, edited because sometimes his style’s too much for me too

The show’s ‘softcore porn for women with the better sort of degree’.

It’s becoming more apparent, year by year, that 21st-century women of the educated castes who watch “Mad Men” find themselves increasingly sexually bored by all the pathetic, politically correct weenies of their own class. That’s “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner’s big conceptual breakthrough: that women these days are aroused by men masterful enough to violate today’s thought-crime taboos, if the ladies can simultaneously maintain plausible deniability that they are actually shocked, shocked by all the old “racism ... cigarettes, sexism, anti-Semitism, alcoholism, homophobia.” “Mad Men” is not actually a satirical put-down of the past; instead, it's designed to be a titillating turn-on for the present.

Peggy’s part of the plausible deniability; they want to be Betty, Joan or Megan. Zou bisou bisou.

While watching “Mad Men,” Weiner affords us ample opportunity to congratulate ourselves on how much progress we’ve made. For example, most of the black characters in “Mad Men” have servile jobs. Today, of course, things are infinitely better. Black men are seldom seen in servile jobs (unless they are African immigrants or gay). In fact, black men aren’t seen in any jobs as much anymore: ten percent of black men were out of the work force in Don Draper’s 1960 versus 24 percent in booming 2000. Indeed, black men aren’t even seen at all as much anymore because a million are now locked away in prison. (The incarceration rate of black male high-school dropouts was one percent in the Bad Old Days of Dwight Eisenhower’s last year in office versus 25 percent in Bill Clinton’s glorious finale.)

People are nostalgic for the middle-class dream possible then, and that’s good. A channel I don’t have, Starz, is rolling out its copy, ‘Magic City’, about Vegas. (Three imitation shows: the failed ‘Playboy Club’, the probably cancelled ‘Pan Am’ – watched them all; essentially the same but without the brooding scenes the critics like – and this. Great!) Bet it’s good.

Pulp romance and sex novels ... are the female equivalent of male visual pornography ... But will you ever hear a media-darling feminist call out these books for what they really are? Of course not. For what they really are is a technicolor ringside seat spectating into the soul of woman. Fantasy is a reflection of real-world desire.

Think about this revelation for more than a Twitter’s-length moment. These pulpy romance books targeted at female audiences are all implausibly similar; you will never encounter a plot line that deviates much from the universal script except in the most trivial details. There is a badboy. There is an indignation, or a series of indignations, to which the female “protagonist” consents or endures, and enjoys despite her conscious declaration to the contrary. There is a niceguy the woman feels bad about not loving. There are societal expectations that add drama to the proceedings. There is sexual surrender preceded by interminable verbal foreplay (the “close-up” for the female reader). And there are pages upon pages of delirious, exquisite hamstering (Roissy’s word for rationalizations).

Feminists rush to claim that these sordid female fantasies are just that: fantasy. But then why is it these books of female porn never showcase a woman having a torrid affair with an attentive, polite beta male who does the dishes and shows up for dates on time? If these desires were outcroppings of the realm of fantasy alone, severed from real desirous thoughts that can be acted upon, then reason dictates women in all their glorious individuality ... would fantasize in the fantasy-dedicated lobes of their brains about a random assortment of scenarios and male archetypes. Yet the thematic universality persists.

The conclusion is obvious: women fantasize about the types of men they do ... because, like men watching porn, it gets them off. And what one dreams about – or reads or watches – to get oneself off is thrillingly close to the same thing that gets one off in earthbound life where flesh meets actual flesh.

Some of his main points:

The natural order from God: women want stronger men than them. The fallen natural order: chicks dig jerks. The fallen natural order worsened by feminism: chicks share jerks so nice guys are alone.

An immutable natural order you f*ck with at your own peril. Yep, he’s conservative.